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Wednesday, 28 January 2015

Sony Services Shut

The 8th generation of consoles has been a one of change: Xbox created Xbox Entertainment Studios, then promptly shut it down after unpopularity, Club Nintendo is being replaced after 13 long years, and now Sony are shutting down two of its services, the most prominent being Music Unlimited: that's right, the music service that you used for a month when you first bought a PS4 will be ending on the 29th March, and anyone with an active subscription by February 28th will get their last month free. If you feel emotional, I recommend creating a playlist made up of Mad World on loop. Let it out.

Replacing the service will be Playstation Music, which will roll out on PS3, PS4 and their Xperia range this Spring. It'll let you play (Music) while you play (Games), but it'll require a Spotify Premium subscription. All you have to do is link your Playstation and Spotify accounts, pay £10 a month, and you're good.

Of course, you could always just listen to Spotify on your phone for fre-

The other service that'll be sorely missed by VITA users is that the Maps app will be no more come a March update, and the near app will lose its location-finding and map-viewing features. So basically it can't do anything.

So why did these services shut? For Music Unlimited, my guess is that not many people buy music on game consoles, let alone listen to it. Spotifty, Deezer, Pandora, Qobuz and Napster have all moved music to mobiles, and the only way Sony can make money out of that is by joining with the biggest contender: Spotify.

And Maps/near? Practically the same reason: Google Maps, Waze and others have moved maps to mobiles. People use mobiles much more than VITAs (Why do you look surprised?) and it's a lot easier to whip out your phone and check where the nearest Vietnamese/Luxembourgish fusion restaurant is. Sony are simply allocating funds to services that people will actually use.

What do you guys think? Did you use either of these services? Will you be buying a Spotify subscription to listen to music on your console? Tell us in the comments!